Contrast the indifference of this Scotch lady in reference to matrimonial love, with the value set upon it in a letter which Pliny the Younger, who was a heathen, wrote concerning his wife, Calpurnia, to her aunt. It is quoted by Dr. Cook as follows: "She loves me, the surest pledge of her virtue, and adds to this a wonderful disposition to learning, which she has acquired from her affection to me. She reads my writings, studies them, and even gets them by heart. You would smile to see the concern she is in when I have a cause to plead, and the joy she shows when it is over. She finds means to have the first news brought her of the success I meet with in court. If I recite anything in public, she cannot refrain from placing herself privately in some corner to hear. Sometimes she accompanies my verses with the lute, without any master except love—the best of instructors. From these instances I take the most certain omens of our perpetual and increasing happiness, since her affection is not founded on my youth or person, which must gradually decay; but she is in love with the immortal part of me."
The second vow taken by both the man and the woman is to "honour." "Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife as unto the weaker vessel." "And the wife see that she reverence her husband." The weaker vessel is to be honoured, not because she is weak, but because, being weak, she acts her part so well.
And even if the wife's courage and endurance should sometimes fail, a good husband would not withhold honour from her on that account. He would remember her weaker nature, and her more delicate physical frame, her more acute nervous sensibility, her greater sensitiveness and greater trials, the peculiar troubles to which she is subject.
In a lately published "Narrative of a Journey through the South China Border Lands," we are told that a wife in this part of the world, when mentioned by her husband, "which happens as seldom as possible," is called "My dull thorn," "The thorn in my ribs," or "The mean one of the inner rooms." This is the way not to honour a wife. But the honour which a husband should give is not merely that chivalrous bearing which the strong owe to the weak, and which every woman has a right to expect from every man. In describing a husband who was in the habit of honouring his wife, Dr. Landels remarks that "one could not be in his presence without feeling it. Never a word escaped his lips which reflected directly or indirectly on her. Never an action he performed would have led to the impression that there could be any difference between them. She was the queen of his home. All about them felt that in his estimation, and by his desire, her authority was unimpeachable, and her will law. And the effect of his example was that children and friends and domestics alike hedged her about with sweet respect. A man of strong will himself, his was never known to be in collision with hers; and, without any undue yielding, the homage which he paid to his wife made their union one of the happiest it has ever been our privilege to witness."
And the wife, on her part, is to reverence and honour her husband as long as she possibly can. If possible, she should let her husband suppose that she thinks him a good husband, and it will be a strong stimulus to his being so. As long as he thinks he possesses the character, he will take some pains to deserve it; but when he has lost the name he will be very apt to abandon the reality altogether. "To treat men as if they were better than they are is the surest way to make them better than they are." Keats tells us that he has met with women who would like to be married to a Poem, and given away by a Novel; but wives must not cease to honour their husbands on discovering that instead of being poetical and romantic they are very ordinary, imperfect beings.
There are homes where poverty has never left its pinch nor sickness paid its visit; homes where there is plenty on the board, and health in the circle, and yet where a skeleton more grim than death haunts the cupboard, and an ache harsher than consumption's tooth gnaws sharply at the heart. Why do those shoulders stoop so early ere life's noon has passed? Why is it that the sigh which follows the closing of the door after the husband has gone off to business is a sigh of relief, and that which greets his coming footstep is a sigh of dread? What means that nervous pressing of the hand against the heart, the gulping back of the lump that rises in the throat, the forced smile, and the pressed-back tear? If we could but speak to the husbands who haunt these homes, we would tell them that some such soliloquy as the following is ever passing like a laboured breath through the distracted minds of their wives: "Is this the Canaan, this the land of promise, this the milk and honey that were pictured to my fancy; when the walks among the lanes, and fields, and flowers were all too short, and the whispers were so loving, and the pressure was so fond, and the heart-beat was so passionate? For what have I surrendered home, youth, beauty, freedom, love—all that a woman has to give in all her wealth of confidence? Harsh tones, cold looks, stern words, short answers, sullen reserve." "What," says the cheery neighbour, "is that all?" All! What more is needed to make home dark, to poison hope, to turn life into a funeral, the marriage-robe into a shroud, and the grave into a refuge? It does not want drunkenness, blows, bruises, clenched fists, oaths, to work sacrilege in the temple of the home; only a little ice where the fire should glow; only a cold look where the love should burn; only a sneer where there ought to be a smile. Husband! that wife of yours is wretched because you are a liar; because you perjured yourself when you vowed to love and cherish. You are too great a coward to beat her brains out with a poker lest the gallows claim you; but you are so little of a man that you poison her soul with the slow cruelty of an oath daily foresworn and brutally ignored. If the ducking-stool was a punishment of old for a scolding wife, a fiercer baptism should await the husband who has ceased to cherish his wife.
As regards the vow of fidelity we need only quote these words of the prophet Malachi: "The Lord hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously: yet she is thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant. And did not he make one? Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth." But there are absentee husbands and wives who, though they are not guilty of breaking the seventh commandment, do by no means keep the promise of keeping only to their wives and husbands. If a man come home only when other places are shut, or when his money is all gone, or when nobody else wants him, is he not telling his wife and family, as plainly by deeds as he could possibly by words, that he takes more delight in other company than in theirs? Charles Lamb used to feel that there was something of dishonesty in any pleasures which he took without his lunatic sister. A good man will feel something like this in reference to his wife and children.
But though men should love their homes, it is quite possible for them to be too much at home. This at least is the opinion of most wives. There is everywhere a disposition to pack off the men in the morning and to bid them keep out of the way till towards evening, when it is assumed they will probably have a little news of the busy world to bring home, and when baby will be sure to have said something exceptionally brilliant and precocious. The general events of the day will afford topics of conversation more interesting by far than if the whole household had been together from morning till night. Men about home all day are fidgety, grumpy, and interfering—altogether objectionable, in short.
As a rule it is when things are going wrong that women show to the best advantage. Every one can remember illustrations. We have one in the following story of Hawthorne, which was told to Mr. Conway by an intimate friend of the novelist. One wintry day Hawthorne received at his office notification that his services would no longer be required. With heaviness of heart he repaired to his humble home. His young wife recognizes the change and stands waiting for the silence to be broken. At length he falters, "I am removed from office." Then she leaves the room; she returns with fuel and kindles a bright fire with her own hands; next she brings pen, paper, ink, and sets them beside him. Then she touches the sad man on the shoulder, and, as he turns to the beaming face, says, "Now you can write your book." The cloud cleared away. The lost office looked like a cage from which he had escaped. "The Scarlet Letter" was written, and a marvellous success rewarded the author and his stout-hearted wife.
The care some wives take of their husbands in sickness is very touching. John Richard Green, the historian, whose death seemed so untimely, is an instance of this. His very life was prolonged in the most wonderful way by the care and skill with which he was tended; and it was with and through his wife that the work was done which he could not have done alone. She consulted the authorities for him, examined into obscure points, and wrote to his dictation. In this way, when he could not work more than two hours in the day, and when often some slight change in the weather would throw him back and make work impossible for days or weeks, the book was prepared which he published under the title of "The Making of England."